Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
A word, please
Each day in my email comes an offering called, “Word Daily”. I don’t know how I got on the mailing list, but the nice people at the company make sure I get a new one each morning. Sometimes it reminds me of my high school English teacher who made it her business to give us her passion for words and their meanings. I say this because I recognize many of the words, some of which are not commonly used. I remember their meanings and try to use them in a sentence, although Word Daily comes complete with a definition and sample sentences.
Every day I look forward to reading the email. Sometimes there will be a word that I haven’t seen for years. I greet it like it’s an old friend. Sometimes there’s a word that I kind of know what it means but I don’t know how to pronounce it – like “inchoate”. I’ve avoided using it until the email told me how to pronounce it properly. So I enjoy the element of surprise, like the day Ted came home from Kindergarten one Fall day and told me that the falling leaves were ubiquitous. I had to look it up at the time. Recently, my 4 year old grandson, Xander, told his mother that they were having a “diwema” because she couldn’t fix a particular food that he was wanting.
This morning’s word I have seen before. I mistakenly thought it was a scientific term because it sounds like one to me. I didn’t realize how much the word would strike me this morning once I found out what it means. The word is “anodyne”. When it is used as an adjective it means, “Not likely to produce dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.” Now that’s a word I relate to. I immediately thought of my personality type on the Enneagram, an ancient system of personality descriptors that uses a nine-pointed star to identify personality types. I am a 9, and have been all my life.
A 9 on the Enneagram is a person who avoids controversy. We 9’s are labelled “Peacemakers”. It doesn’t stop there, though, because being a 9 means hiding from disagreement at all costs. It means that issues don’t get resolved if there is a chance that resolving them will cause stress or tension. It means that I will put up with conflict by remaining silent, or withdrawing all together. It means that in my past I have avoided any discord like the plague. This tendency has not served me well. I once had a manager who micromanaged me from the day I was hired. The thing she did most often was to page me, “Where are you and what are you doing?”, several times each day. I put up with that for seven years, which says a lot about my tolerance of semi-abusive behavior.
Now I’m 73, soon to be 74. I’ve been a steady attender of a 12 Step group for over 5 years. In those years I have found my voice to a greater degree than at any time in my life. I have learned that honesty needs to be a central part of my recovery, and that speaking out about a problem is actually a good thing. Even if it raises hackles, the truth, although relative, is key to my recovery. I have learned that I need not disappear on the inside when things get tough on the outside.
So, as I face a difficulty in one aspect of my life I know that speaking out is the right thing to do. If my thoughts are challenged I can defend them with facts. If my Truth varies from that of another, it is still my Truth with a capital T and it is worth discussing respectfully. In todays “Word Daily”, one of the sample sentences said this: “He feared fueling tensions any further so he kept his remarks as anodyne as possible.” I know that guy. He used to be me.